The Lost Vineyard & the Island Winemaker

The story of La Perdida begins with inheritance, science, and the refusal to conform. Nacho González was born in Galicia and trained as a biologist, working across Spain on both land and ocean conservation projects. He was not a winemaker by trade; he was a scientist who understood ecosystems, soil microbiology, and the slow, patient work of regeneration. In 2011, he settled permanently in Valdeorras to work in his field — not wine, but biology. But the afternoons were free, and the family vineyards were waiting.

His grandmother had left him a small, overgrown vineyard called O Trancado — a plot so neglected that the vines were nearly invisible behind tall grass and wild growth. She had always made wine for the family, selling some grapes and keeping the rest for home production. Nacho had childhood memories of harvests, of the whole family working together, of wine made not for commerce but for sustenance. He began tending O Trancado with the mind of a biologist: not with chemicals, but with observation. He let the grass grow. He eschewed herbicides. He watched the insects return, the soil soften, and the old vines — some 80 years old — slowly regain their strength. The first vintage, in 2011, yielded just 600 bottles. The following year, he acquired a small cellar that had been closed for years, and La Perdida was born.

The name came from his neighbours. As Nacho worked his grandmother's vineyard, other growers walked past and shook their heads. The vines were hidden behind wild grass — "perdida," they called it. Lost. They deemed Nacho "a loco" — a madman — for not using herbicides to control the unbridled growth. Where they saw chaos, Nacho saw a forest floor. Where they saw neglect, he saw soil recovery. He adopted the insult as his label: La Perdida — The Lost. It refers not only to the overgrown vineyards but to the grapes themselves — the overlooked, low-yielding, difficult indigenous varieties that the modern wine industry had abandoned in favour of productive monoculture.

Nacho began accumulating parcels one by one — not by purchasing large estates, but by finding small, hard-to-reach plots, usually sloped and at high altitude, that had been abandoned as rural populations declined. By the end of the first year he already had ten parcels; today he farms 28 plots equating to just under six hectares. He calls them his "island wines" — each parcel is an isolated island of biodiversity, surrounded by forest and far from the industrial vineyards of the valley floor. He remains an island himself: a regular fixture on the European natural wine circuit, but content to stay outside the lines in Valdeorras. As he says, "I will remain an island."

The guiding philosophy of La Perdida is soil recovery translated into liquid emotion. Nacho approaches winemaking not as a technician but as an ecologist: his primary intervention is in the vineyard, where he works to regenerate exhausted soils into living, forest-like ecosystems. In the cellar, he is steadfastly traditional in his respect for the grape and radically experimental in his methods. The result is a style that is light, tart, and refreshing, yet simultaneously full of complexity — wines that zig when you expect them to zag, and that carry the wild energy of their island origins.

All grapes are hand-harvested from organic, chemical-free vines on steep, remote parcels, then transported to the tiny cellar in Larouco. Nacho prefers co-fermentation: rather than separating varieties, he ferments the mixed grapes of each parcel together — Palomino with Garnacha Tintorera, Godello with Doña Branca, Mencía with Mouratón — allowing the field blend to express the genetic diversity of the vineyard itself. Fermentation occurs spontaneously with indigenous yeasts, and skin contact varies by cuvée: from a few days for freshness, to five or six months in tinaja for texture and tannic complexity.

The ageing vessels are chosen for their neutrality and their connection to tradition. Tinajas from Juan Padilla — fifth-generation clay artisans in La Mancha, whose vessels are also used by COS and Foradori in Italy — provide breathability and texture without oak flavour. Very old oak barrels (chestnut and French oak) give micro-oxygenation and gentle structure. Stainless steel preserves purity and freshness. Nacho never uses new oak, never adds tannins, never corrects acidity. The wines rest for months on lees before being bottled without fining or filtration — a decision that means some bottles carry a natural haze, but that ensures no aromatic or textural nuance is lost. The only addition is nothing: zero sulphites, zero enzymes, zero corrections.

Nacho is deliberately outside the Valdeorras DO. He takes issue with the appellation's allowance of large-scale farming, its dominance of single-varietal Godello, and its prohibition of Palomino (which the DO calls "Jerez") from premium labels. His wines are bottled as Vino de España — a category that carries no prestige in the conventional market but offers absolute freedom. As Nacho says, he is the bodyguard of his vines: "I only take care of them." The cellar is not a factory; it is an ecological laboratory where a biologist lets 28 islands speak in 28 different voices, all wild, all honest, all unmistakably lost.

Nacho González is not merely a winemaker; he is a soil ecologist, a vineyard rescuer, and a cultural resistor — a biologist who has helped to redefine what Valdeorras can be in an era when the region was in danger of becoming a monoculture of industrial Godello. In a landscape dominated by large wineries, flat-land vineyards, and the homogenisation of regional styles, Nacho represents something rare and vital: a bridge between scientific ecology and ancestral viticulture, between the deepest traditions of Galician field-blend farming and the most uncompromising practices of zero-addition winemaking. He was organic before it was common, natural before it was marketable, and lost before it was fashionable. La Perdida is not merely a source of wine; it is a model for how to recover soil, how to resist the DO, and how to let the abandoned speak.

The legacy of La Perdida extends far beyond the bottle. By reviving 28 abandoned, isolated parcels that the industry had written off as economically unviable, Nacho has proven that the "worst" sites — the steepest, the most overgrown, the most lost — often contain the best vines. His championing of Palomino and Garnacha Tintorera — grapes dismissed by the DO and by conventional growers — has established a new paradigm for Valdeorras: one that values genetic diversity, soil health, and historical honesty over productive monoculture. His zero-addition methodology — no SO₂, no fining, no filtration — has inspired a generation of younger producers across Galicia to question the necessity of chemical intervention. And his refusal to accept the Valdeorras DO, with its prohibition of Palomino and its tolerance of industrial farming, has made him a symbol of artistic freedom in Spanish wine.

The future of La Perdida is tied to the future of Nacho's islands. In August 2025, the worst wildfire in Galician history devastated the region, burning over 30,000 hectares. Nacho lost 7 to 8 of his 42 plots — vineyards in Seadur and Larouco that were damaged or destroyed by flame and heatwave. He is rebuilding, fertilising burnt vines at the roots, waiting to see which latent buds will sprout again. As he says, "This year is ruined for us. But we'll just have to see what buds, and what the future brings, because there's no other way forward." The story of La Perdida is the story of a biologist who looked at overgrown grass and saw a forest, who looked at banned grapes and saw history, and who looked at a burning valley and saw the stubborn possibility of renewal. It is a story of being lost — and of finding, in that loss, something truer than conformity ever could be.